What does the term halitosis mean?
Just in case you are wondering, halitosis is medical terminology for bad breath. Halitosis is derived from the Latin word "halitus," which means breath, and the Greek suffix "osis," which means condition.
How do you test for halitosis?
Researchers have for tried to develop scientific methods that can quantify the severity of halitosis. This is because a human's sense of smell, at least for research purposes, introduces too many variables.
It's easy to understand how an olfactory appraisal of halitosis might vary from one individual tester to another. But research has also shown that any one tester's evaluation of a single person's halitosis will be inconsistent too. This variance is due to factors such as hunger, menstrual cycle, head positioning, and the number of consecutive times the tester has been exposed to an odor.
Several types of scientific apparatuses have been borrowed from other scientific fields or specifically designed to quantify degree's of halitosis. The list of these tools includes gas chromatographs, sulfide meters (Halimeters), and chemiluminescence detectors.
For the purposes of our discussion here however, despite all of its drawbacks, all you really need when evaluating your own breath for halitosis is a good old fashion organoleptic testing device. This equipment is cheap, widely available, very portable, very sensitive (it can distinguish up to about 10,000 different smells), and while not perfect, is really a pretty good indicator. If you haven't guessed by now, the "organoleptic device" that we're alluding to here is your own nose.
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